Exploring Platform Migration Patterns between Twitter and Mastodon: A User Behavior Study
Open accessAbstract
A recent surge of users migrating from Twitter to alternative platforms, such as Mastodon, raised questions regarding what migration patterns are, how different platforms impact user behaviors, and how migrated users settle in the migration process. In this study, we elaborate on how we investigate these questions by collecting data over 10,000 users who migrated from Twitter to Mastodon within the first ten weeks following the ownership change of Twitter. Our research is structured in three primary steps. First, we develop algorithms to extract and analyze migration patterns. Second, by leveraging behavioral analysis, we examine the distinct architectures of Twitter and Mastodon to learn how user behaviors correspond with the characteristics of each platform. Last, we determine how particular behavioral factors influence users to stay on Mastodon. We share our findings of user migration, insights, and lessons learned from the user behavior study.
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An alternative, decentralized paradigm for social media has emerged, primarily centered around protocols that seek to reconfigure how power is distributed across a network of actors.
“In response, an alternative, decentralized paradigm for social media has emerged, primarily centered around protocols that seek to reconfigure how power is distributed across a network of actors [22,58,85].”
From Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols (2026) · cites this paper as [58]
The Introduction (page unavailable) describes Mastodon as a decentralized alternative to Twitter, with a shared Activity Pub protocol connecting self-hosted servers that have distinct moderation policies. That supports the decentralized, protocol-based part of the claim, but the paper does not say that such protocols seek to reconfigure how power is distributed across actors. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Authors
- Jeong, U., Sheth, P., Tahir, A., Alatawi, F., Bernard, H. R., & Liu, H.
- Affiliations
- Arizona State University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
- Published
- 2024-05-28
- Volume
- 18
- Pages
- 738-750
- ISSN
- 2162-3449 (ISSN-L)
- 2334-0770
- OpenAlex
- W4399205534
- Cited by
- 34
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 14.01
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (2227488)
- Northwestern University
- Office of Naval Research (N00014-21-1-4002, N00014)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Keywords
- platform migration, Twitter, Mastodon, user behavior, social networking sites, user retention, migration patterns, behavior analysis, platform architecture
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